Autumn Gillard (Southern Paiute)

Coordinator for the Grand Staircase Escalante Intertribal Coalition

During his first term, President Donald Trump shrank Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument by half. Last spring, the five tribes with ancestral lands within Grand Staircase-Escalante formed an intertribal coalition to better advocate for the monument and ensure that their perspectives were included in its management under a second Trump administration. In early March, Republican members of Congress sought to repeal the monument resource management plan that had been approved under the Biden administration.

Location: Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, Utah

“The groundwork actually started in 2019 to establish the coalition. A previous cultural manager from one of the tribes said we really need to have a tribal coalition for this monument, so that Indigenous voices can be heard.

“The resource management plan prior to 2020 did not include Indigenous voices in the management of our ancestral landscape, and so we had worked diligently as the coalition to make sure that we were putting comments in for this new process for the resource management plan that was approved in January of 2025.

“The (congressional actions) would severely impact the process that tribes had taken to integrate our traditional ecological knowledge into the commenting process for this management plan. It could also prohibit a future Resource Management Plan — maybe there wouldn’t even be one. It would diminish all of the consultation that was held between the government and tribes. We worked so hard, and we have some individuals that have worked on these comments that are no longer with us. We’re not going to be able to re-retrieve that beautiful cultural knowledge.”

Cody Desautel (Colville)

President of the Intertribal Timber Council

The Intertribal Timber Council, which comprises some 50 tribal nations, is focused on the management of forests, fire and natural resources. 

Location: Colville Reservation, Washington

“The Department of Interior fire reorganization has us concerned. The structure and how the leadership gets built out will be important in ensuring that they understand Indian Country; what some of their responsibilities will be for protecting tribal trust resources and then how they navigate (contracting with tribal governments), which will be new to most of them. There’s a lot of unknowns going into this fire season.

“With the reduction of the workforce in the U.S. Forest Service, and particularly under the leadership of the new chief, there seems to be a renewed objective to partner with tribes. We’ve got several bills working through Congress now that would expand tribal co-management authorities on adjacent federal land, and we’ve had some discussions about what shared stewardship agreements might look like. There’s as much tribal-specific legislation moving through Congress as any point I’ve seen in my career.

“We always tend to pivot, recognizing where we’ve got opportunities with any given administration, and sometimes we pick up one political agenda with a change and then set down one that we worked on in the past. From a forestry and fire perspective, typically there’s a lot of alignment with those, and so we seem to be able to maintain some of the momentum that we’ve gained in past Congresses. 

“I think there’s always opportunity, even when there’s change. One of the best things that has come out of this administration is the focus on partnerships. Downsizing the federal government has impacts to us; it also creates opportunity when they’re looking to have other partners do some of that work. I think tribes are situated to do that.”

Amelia Marchand (Colville)

Former chair of the Tribes and Indigenous People’s Committee, Advisory Council on Historic Preservation

Location: Pushpum

In 2023, after the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission refused to consult privately with the Yakama Nation about plans to develop a sacred site for renewable energy, another federal agency intervened: the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation (ACHP). The council — a board of experts that advises the federal government on historic preservation — recommended that FERC follow the law and conduct a culturally appropriate consultation.

In 2024, Amelia Marchand became the first woman that a U.S. president had ever appointed to her seat — the only seat designated for an Indigenous person.  That made her responsible for representing the interests of 575 different cultures and governments. But before Marchand could serve out her four-year term, the Trump administration took office and fired her.

Marchand had been advocating for the ACHP to get involved with the upcoming 250th anniversary of the United States, and had also begun work on the council’s four-year strategic plan. “I had made sure to include rights holders whenever it said stakeholders” to refer to tribal nations and their people, Marchand said of her work on the plan. “It’s a fundamental difference.”

Lumping tribal interests in with those of the general public and corporate stakeholders overlooks tribes’ sovereignty.

“People are intentionally not taught this — that tribal citizens and tribes have rights. Reserved rights. Treaty rights.”

Within days of sending this recommendation, however, Marchand received an email from the White House saying that her position had been terminated, effective immediately. It did not offer her a chance to resign. Marchand said three other appointees got similar emails that day, although it’s unclear whether they were all related to the strategic plan.

That left tribes without an advocate on the ACHP as they navigated government-to-government consultation, until January of this year when the Trump administration appointed John Tahsuda III (Kiowa Nation of Oklahoma) to the seat. Tahsuda works for a lobbyist group and served as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs during the first Trump administration in the Department of the Interior.

Oscar Arana (Chichimeca)

CEO, Native American Youth and Family Center

Portland’s  Native American Youth and Family Center (NAYA) is a Native-run community hub serving the city’s Indigenous residents. It provides a food distribution center, preschool, high school, event space, community garden and more and also hosts classes on parenting and homeownership, Indian markets and connecting families to resources and support.

Location: Portland, Oregon

“We’re facing a lot of challenges, given the current federal administration and their priorities. There’s less funding for services and to support the community. One of the many needs that we’re seeing is access to housing. We’re seeing evictions go up. The price of everything is going up, and wages aren’t keeping up. Folks are having to make some really difficult choices about what they’re able to afford. We’ve seen a huge uptick in food requests.

“There’s a lot more stress happening right now within the community. Things like ICE being around is creating fear within our community. … We’ve had to set up ICE trainings. We’ve had to set up additional ways to secure our building.

“We’ve seen some cuts in case management and educational and youth programs, funding that has plateaued a lot in our economic development programs and small-business development. If you remain flat in your funding but everything is getting more expensive, it feels like it’s a cut. It just creates more strain on our organization.

“What everybody is experiencing is an economy that is being constrained. … Everything is shrinking. There’s less resources available. And this is just the beginning, because things take time. Some of the decisions that have been made earlier this year are not really going to go into effect until much later. We’re going to start even seeing more cuts to SNAP benefits. We’re going to have people having less access to health care. So it’s going to continue to compound.”

Mincho Jacob (Q’eqchi’)

Mayan Q’eqchi’ interpreter for International Mayan League

The immigration policies of President Trump’s second term have had an overwhelming impact on Indigenous people who have immigrated to the U.S. from places like Guatemala and Ecuador. The International Mayan League advocates and supports Indigenous immigrants through a community network. 

Location: Houston, Texas

“I’m a volunteer for the Mayan League. Unfortunately we just lost one of our really excellent community leaders in Q’eqchi’. He went back to Guatemala. He lived here for 18 years, but he was like, ‘I don’t want to get deported. I want to go back on my own terms.’

 “I go with folks to court sometimes to do interpretation and community meetings, especially ‘know your rights’ (meetings) we’ve done a lot of that, both to culturally interpret but also linguistically interpret what’s going on. That has actually been a lot of what my role has been with the community, just helping people navigate this world, which is utterly, completely different from the reality of rural Guatemala.

“Asylum is a legal right, both by international law and by our domestic laws. There is no margin of error now, because of this expedited removal. That’s what’s happening at these hearings. People think they’re good, the judges are dismissing the case. But that means you’re no longer in any kind of status, and if you’ve been here for less than two years now, you’re eligible for expedited removal. You’re in a detention center for two, three weeks. And that’s what’s been really confusing.

 “I went with a woman the other day to court as a friend to accompany her. She doesn’t want to go, but if she doesn’t go, her case gets terminated, she gets a deportation order. But they could also dismiss the case, and she’s automatically eligible for deportation.

“Houston is a border city, because we’re 100 miles from the (coastal) border. (ICE) can smash windows, they can detain you without asking — all those things that people say looks illegal. It’s not. It is legal. I mean, they definitely are pushing the envelope. But as Indigenous people know here, the law is only as good as what gets enforced.”

Samuel Torres (Mexica/Nahua)

Deputy chief executive officer of the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition

In February, the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition was in Denver to collect oral histories as part of its ongoing work documenting the schools’ lasting impacts on the survivors of government-run boarding schools.

Location: Denver, Colorado

“NABS was deeply impacted this past year when the Trump administration ordered the National Endowment for Humanities to cancel over $1.5 million of funding for boarding school archival research and for interviewing boarding school survivors. We would expect this to be largely a bipartisan issue — that every elected leader could be able to understand the need for the reflections, the insights and the feelings and the stories of our relatives that they have experienced. These stories, they live on the tips of the tongues of our relatives. 

“We very much saw this move as negatively impacting the progress that NABS and the rest of Indian Country have made in a call for truth and accountability, toward learning what really happened to our relatives that are still here with us, as well as ancestors. The Trump administration inflicted a wound in the progress of (our) work, and directly affected boarding school survivors, descendants and their nations.

“As Indigenous people, we have always looked beyond the every four years approach. We have always endeavored to think intergenerationally. And so, in that mindset, these disagreements, conflicts, these moments of strife that we experience along the way, they don’t derail our progress. They offer moments of discernment for us to think long-term, to think creatively. And to firm our resolve towards what our people deserve and how sovereignty is upheld, because one president is not going to determine what our sovereignty means to us.”

Zion White (Quechan)

Quechan tribal commissioner on the Chuckwalla Intertribal Commission

Chuckwalla National Monument was formed in the waning days of the Biden administration with broad, bipartisan support. Last October, tribal nations formed a commission to better advocate for the monument. 

Location: Chuckwalla National Monument, California

“Any action or attempt to reduce or rescind Chuckwalla National Monument will be met with opposition from the tribes. This had so much support for it to be established that we can’t just let it be stripped away without taking action and exercising our sovereignty.

“The future is yet to be told. Just speaking for myself as a commissioner, I think we have to be prepared to explain our stance as to why this should continue to exist, and that might be a fight in and of itself for the next three years. There’s no telling who’s going to make a decision and when. Moving forward, I really hope that there is opportunity to start talking with the Bureau of Land Management, with the Department of the Interior, to talk about a co-stewardship plan involving the tribes, so that we can incorporate our shared values within the way this is managed.

“For the Quechan Tribe, our connection to the desert Southwest region expands far beyond our current reservation boundaries. And that’s evident through the language and songs that are still spoken and sung today. I myself am a traditional singer. I sing the urav lightning songs, and they speak about sacred places that are in the areas of the monument. It’s not a thing of the past or a thing that once was. This is right here, right now, in knowledge that is carried by tribal members of the tribe. 

“To have no say in how the land is cared for is an injustice to the landscape, and to the ancestors that fought so hard for our existence as Indigenous people. So our goal and mission is to honor those who came before us and to honor the future generations so that they may know this place.”

Ira Matt (Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes)

Executive director for Indigenous diplomacy and federal relations, National Association of Tribal Historic Preservation Officers

Location: Flathead Reservation, Montana

Ira Matt worked for six years as a tribal historic preservation officer (THPO) for the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes on the Flathead Reservation, where he’s also a citizen. During that time, he helped build a database of oral histories and tribal landscape uses dating back to the 1850s. Matt now works on behalf of other THPOs as executive director of Indigenous diplomacy and federal relations at the National Association of Tribal Historic Preservation Officers (NATHPO).

Federal funding for tribal historic preservation officers was frozen during the Trump administration’s review of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in early 2025. Although a number of government departments eventually clarified that the federal government’s obligations to tribes were not considered part of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion intiatives, budget cuts hit tribal historic preservation officers anyway.

“There was no communication,” Matt said. “Staff started leaving positions in tribes. Programs suffered.”

Tribal historic preservation officers, he said, were already underfunded. They work on tight regulatory agency deadlines, sometimes doing so in isolated areas with few resources, low job security and a high degree of emotional investment. “These are people living paycheck to paycheck.

“The tribal preservation officer is a voice for their tribal nation,” Matt said. “And when they are unable to participate — when federal agencies or other applicants conduct outreach to try to identify areas of interest (or) to get information on how to do cultural surveys — without a tribal preservation officer, there’s no response.

“What’s going to happen with a lot of these projects is they’re going to move forward — they’re going to damage and destroy these cultural locations,” Matt said. “There’s a lot of intangible impacts the preservation field is going to feel for years to come.”

Jolyana Begay-Kroupa (Navajo)

Chief executive officer at Phoenix Indian Center

The Phoenix Indian Center is the oldest nonprofit of its kind, supporting urban Indigenous people with job training, cultural programs and community engagement. 

Location: Phoenix, Arizona

“We’re just down the street from the Veterans Affairs hospital. In this last year, one of the administration initiatives was the issue with the tribal flags that were displayed and housed at the Veterans Hospital. They were removed. (It) was just a really disrespectful way to go about it. It really impacted our community. We had a lot of upset relatives who felt that was really disrespectful. 

“We have a lot of federal grants. There have been some asks to shift the language in our narratives — the new policy that you needed to remove the diversity and inclusion language. There was literally a list that was given, and ‘Native American’ was on it. It was concerning that we had to go into our narrative and change words, knowing that we can’t use ‘Native American.’ So we did the best that we could, and we broadened language so that we can continue programs and services.

“I always try to think about, how would our elders have handled this? What would my grandmother have said? And my grandmother, she was a very traditional Navajo woman. She, in many instances, would find some positive in what’s happening. So, for our organization, it really is a time where we look at sustainability and continue to remember that overall picture of what we do. We are looking forward, pivoting if we need to, but with the overall commitment of: We are there — and we will continue to be there — for our relatives.”

Ray Watson (Orutsararmiut Native Council)

Bering Sea Interior Tribal Commission Executive Board member

The Public Lands Rule, established under the Biden administration, elevated conservation as an official “use” and gave tribes clearer pathways to protect cultural sites on public lands. In 2025, the Trump administration rescinded the rule without consulting with tribes. 

Location: Bethel, Alaska

“Our position is that we strongly oppose (the rescission of the Public Lands Rule) and encourage the agency to retain the rule, to meet its trust responsibility with tribes. That’s where our position is today. 

“The tribe itself has a responsibility that goes back a lot of generations to protect the land. Because we live off it: We live off the ocean; we live off the river; we live off the tundra and what it provides — the animals and the fish and things like that. 

“What has happened in the past few months with the Trump administration is that they pretty much expedited any regulatory rulings that have to do with things like mines or mineral extraction. They’re not looking at the impact. They’re not getting tribal consultation, so the tribes have no say in this. 

“Unfortunately, what has happened, it splits our people. It’s going to continue to divide people like it has. Recreational and substance gathering, if you take that away, you are, in a sense, taking away a culture from that generation. I see that over the generations, that the culture is changing.

“The administration has fast-tracked efforts here in Alaska, whether it be oil up north or the largest (proposed) gold mine in the world. So things will be moving very quickly, but we will be fighting every step of the way. I always want to encourage that we protect what little we have, because it’s going away fast.”